A wired network typically includes several network elements that control the flow of traffic. The network elements are traditionally managed individually via an element management system. Such management relies on the network elements exposing one or more management interfaces used to interact with the element management system. The interfaces may use any of a variety of protocols, including simple network management protocol (SNMP), extensible markup language (XML), common object request broker architecture (CORBA), etc. Traditional element management is limited to management of the features of an individual network element itself; network elements traditionally have only information regarding the individual device, and not information about the network. Thus, communication between network elements has been handled via a centralized network management system. In order to manage a network with previously known techniques, and particularly to diagnose a network problem, each network element must be discovered and individually accessed. Network-wide information was limited to the network management system, which provided network information regarding architecture, configurations, etc.